Can 'managed growth' concept be a magic elixir?

In this continuing series, Herald Times staff writer Laurie Lounsbury will examine several issues connected to land use. Still to come:

€ Follow the leader - what are the state recommendations for "cool cities" in Michigan?

€ Dispelling the Myths of the Malls - are malls and big box retailers good for the local economy?

€ That's all Folks - a summary and collection of quotes.

By Laurie Lounsbury

Staff Writer

OTSEGO COUNTY - A managed growth initiative sounds like a magic elixir to curb sprawl and create a smart, livable community.

There's just one problem: Everyone wants managed growth, but rarely does everyone agree on the definition of managed growth.

"There are folks out there who want to see development happen with a managed growth plan, other folks who don't want things to change at all, and others who don't care," said Russell Clark of R. Clark Associates in Traverse City. "The goal is to get them all involved in the process."

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Clark and his associate Keith Charters are the consultants who likely will be hired to guide Otsego County through a managed growth planning process. Every governmental unit in the county supports the managed growth initiative. The only thing missing is the funding. To that end, Jeff Ratcliffe, executive director of the Otsego County Economic Alliance, is trying to secure grants to pay for the project, which comes with an estimated $130,000 price tag.

Designing a managed growth plan begins with developing consensus on what a community wants to look like in five, 10 and 20 years. Clark and Charters start the process by hosting small community forums to allow everyone to have a voice in the process. It's what they call the "visioning" process - what's the community vision for the future?

The Vision

There has to be a certain amount of education about the possibilities and trends in community planning before there can be a vision. After all, a person who has lived on a farm his whole life would have a tough time envisioning row homes with courtyards.

Richard Norton, assistant professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan, has spent extensive amounts of time studying what people want and how that can be translated into a vision.

"People seem to want to re-create small communities," Norton said. "There's a trend now toward re-working zoning codes, and modeling master plans on designs from the 1920s."

It would appear, then, that the desire to spread out and live in suburban homes on big lots, far from the center of town, is dwindling. Designers are sprucing up master plans nearly one century old, designing new communities with narrow roads, plenty of sidewalks, a mixed use of housing to include apartments, row homes, townhomes, and single-family homes on small lots; then adding business and retail to the mix; and lastly, laying it out in an old-fashioned grid pattern instead of spreading it along miles of curving roads with cul-de-sacs.

"It seems to me we have to get as much density as we can on small amounts of property, and leave as much green space as we can," Tober said.

There will always be people who want to live on five acres of land in the countryside, but the cost to maintain that lifestyle shouldn't be borne by those who don't choose to live that way, according to Norton.

"The asserted right to 'live wherever I want' is a myth because it only gives half the equation," Norton wrote in an April 7 editorial that ran in the Ann Arbor News. "It fails to acknowledge that one's choice of where and how to live has larger implications for one's community."

Otsego County planners' attorney Kevin Elsenheimer sees the challenge in terms of a time-honored American tradition.

"Property owner rights are a huge issue in this country," he said. "It's hard to tell people how their property should be used to serve the good of the community."

The Plan

The biggest challenge of creating a seemingly utopian community that will please everyone (almost) starts with one monumental document - the master plan.

Clark outlined the way he recommends developing a master plan:

- Determine the community's goals and desires for growth, development and land use.

- Compare those goals and desires with the current master plan, then determine what needs to be done to make the master plan compatible with those goals.

- Take the proposed new master plan and compare it to current zoning laws, then figure out what needs to be done to the zoning ordinances to align them to the master plan.

"That's the hardest step," Clark said of the final step.

Going through so much work to develop a good master plan and zoning laws would suggest to some that, once the arduous process is completed, everything should be etched in stone. This would fly in the face of some planning commissioners' opinions.